It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

TOM MULCAIR,
THE NDP, THE FTQ, AND THE OVERLOOKED STORY OF THE WEEK

Eugene Plawiuk

August 14, 2015

The second week of the election saw lots of news around the
various parties and leaders. The most
important story of the week involved the NDP but it was quickly lost in the
other news stories that swirl around Tom Mulcair and the NDP. The story and the
political impact of most news stories from this week will disappear in the
distance as we get closer to October 19 voting day. But this news will have an impact far beyond
its one day news story in the press.

The press is English you see, and it represents English
Canada, the events and politics of Quebec get little coverage in the Postmedia
Monopoly. And when they do get covered it is with little depth, as there are
few reporters versed in the politics of Quebec that write in English or for the
English Press in Canada.

The news event that was of greater importance than all the
others was that the second largest labour federation in Canada had endorsed the NDP and Tom Mulcair for PM. The FTQ or Quebec Labour Federation is larger
than the Ontario Federation of Labour, as a provincial body and for
affiliations it rivals the CLC, the Canadian Labour Congress. In fact it is a
National Labour Federation that is as important as the CLC. Yet you hear little
about it in the Canadian press.

This week the federation did the unexpected and surprised
the nations of Quebec and Canada by endorsing a Federalist Party for the first
time in forty years and that Federal party was the Social Democratic NDP and its Quebec born leader Tom Mulcair.
This is no small thing, because for those last forty years the FTQ has been the
backbone of Quebec Inc. as much as it has been the base in both the PQ and the
BQ. It was and is the left wing of the established Quebec Nationalist movement,
until this week that is.

This week the FTQ announced it had abandoned the Bloc
Quebecois (BQ) formed by Brian Mulroney Conservatives from Quebec, as well as
liberal and social democratic Quebecois. It came about with the fall of the
Mulroney Government, resulting in a Liberal government and the official
opposition being a Quebec Nationalist
party the BQ. The Bloc as it was called in the English language press was an
unholy alliance that scared the bejesus out of English Canada.

Published on:
August 11, 2015 | MASCOUCHE — A
major and sovereignist-leaning labour federation in Quebec has dropped its
long-standing endorsement of theBlocQuebecois and
some of its member unions are supporting the NDP, making party leader Tom
Mulcair “extremely proud.”

Mulcair said
New Democrats will work hard to maintain support from Quebec’s unions — who
have traditionally supported sovereignist parties at the federal and provincial
levels — in order to “expand our traditional base and rally progressives across
Quebec and Canada.”Quebec’s FTQ
federation is heavily involved in politics; it covers 37 labour unions and
counts 600,000 members.Its
secretary-general, Serge Cadieux, said Tuesday the FTQ is not officially
endorsing any political party, but that two of its unions have so far come out
in support of the NDP.The federation
has officially endorsed theBlocin
almost every federal election since the early ’90s and it favours the
sovereignist Parti Québécois provincially.

This time,
however, Cadieux said theBlocis
not best-placed to beat the Conservatives, whom he called “catastrophic” for
working people.

Cadieux said
the FTQ has targeted 10 ridings in Quebec where support for the Conservatives
is relatively strong and where it will “focus its energies.”

Formed in the 1990’s it was victorious in the federal
election of 1996 after the defeat of the provincial Parti Quebecois sponsored
referendum on Soviergnty Association with Canada. It’s leader was the
charismatic former Mulroney Conservative Minister Lucien Bouchard. With the
narrowest of votes the referendum (like those later in Catalonia, and Scotland)
for separation was defeated. In that defeat the then Premier of Quebec exposed
the nationalist agenda as one of racism and exclusionism, with the dark tinge
of Duplesis’s racism and anti-Semitism. He denounced the loss as being the
result of foreigners and immigrants and those of Upper Westmount, the historic
Jewish enclave in Montreal.

With the failure of the referendum there was an immediate
leadership race for the PQ and then leader of the BQ in a controversial
opportunistic decision went from leader of the BQ to the Leader of the PQ and
provincial premier in the following election.

In 1997 the BQ elected a new leader, a left wing leader,
Gilles Duceppe, who was a former union leader and Marxist-Leninist. He remained
leader till 2011 when he lost his seat in the Orange Wave that swept Quebec
during that federal election.

Duceppe is back now as leader of the BQ, a decimated party
that is a skeletal ghost of itself.

From its once lofty position, ironically, as Her Majesty’s
Official Opposition, the BQ has had a massive decline in power and seats, last election left the party with four sitting
MP’s, two of which abandoned the party half way through their terms to sit as
independents. The BQ ended its days with as many seats as the fledgling elected
Green Party in the House of Commons.

Duceppe was brought out of mothballs this spring to take
over the leadership once again of the BQ for the upcoming October 19
election. The hope was that his charm
and charisma could cobble together some kind of opposition to the NDP this
election. And key to that ability was not just Duceppe but the support of
social movements, cooperatives, and the labour movement. All of whom had
abandoned the BQ after the NDP overwhelmingly swept through Quebec last
election.

To have lost the FTQ support means that Duceppe and the BQ,
which once had the most powerful political organization in the province, have
to run cap in hand with little or no base of support.

Even the BQ’s provincial counterpart the PQ can do little
for the party or Duceppe, despite a recent photo op of him and the leader of
the PQ riding bicycles together. For unlike Mssr. Duceppe a former Marxist
Leninist and trade unionist, Karl Pierre Palideau the PQ leader is a captain of industry, a union busting boss of
the Quebecor empire, virtually synonymous with Quebec Inc.

Peladeau suddenly became a nationalist in the last
provincial election which saw the defeat of the PQ, in part thanks to Mssr.
Peladeau’s nationalist exhortations,
resulting in a majority Liberal government in Quebec and Mssr. Peladeau
now leader of the Party Quebecor. Mssr
Peladeau as a politician is a stick in the mud, a one trick pony. Duceppe can
expect little of the old communal support from the PQ if only because the party
is a shadow of its former self.

When Duceppe was rolled out as the savior of the BQ for this
election English Canadian pundits ruminated about the possibility that this
would dent the NDP majority in the province. Yes two seats and a defeated
Duceppe were going to be a real threat to the NDP.

And as it has turned out no such thing occurred, indeed the
opposite did the FTQ and its financial cooperative the Fond Solidare, or the
Solidarity Fund, the largest single source of workers investment capital. the
only successful labour fund in either Canada’s. The FTQ manages this investment
fund for its members, and public investors, making it the thirds largest
investor in Quebec Inc after the Casse Populair; the Quebec Pension Fund, and the Desjardin
Funds. As far as private capital goes the Power corporation sontinues its
historic domination of that sector while Peladeau’s Quebecor follows not far
behind, Old Capital meet New Capital.

The Solidarity Fund invests its member’s money into Quebec
infrastructure for instance Rona, and Hydro Quebec, if there is a chocolate
factory that needs funding Fonds Solidaire is there. It has been criticized by
those in the business press, as both being an investment monopoly with undue
influence in Quebec Inc. and a dangerous investment vehicle, which means it is
successful and a model to follow, which had not been done in English Canada
where the closest labour would come is the BC Construction Unions Labour Fund,
which CLC Ken Georgetti helped set up.

So you have a base in a very activist and political labour
federation and its investment fund, endorsing the NDP and Tom Mulcair, and this
is no big thing in English Canada. Lets
understand what this means, the federation has officially abandoned the BQ.
That means it is dead, let me repeat that dead. Duceppe was defeated by the NDP
in a safe riding, and now he has been resurrected to lead a zombie party, in
order to take votes away from the NDP, giving them to either Trudeau Liberals, or Harper Cons.

The hope was that this would be enough to halt the Orange
wave spreading across Canada.

But this fifth column has collapsed into dust now that the
FTQ has thrown its complete support behind the NDP, despite its protestations
that it is only promoting ABC. This should be headline news, almost as
important as the NDP winning government from Harper. This is the final stake in the heart of this
undead creature the BQ, what had begun under Jack Layton, has finally met its
finale under Tom Mulcair.

Here is the headline if the media and pundits were honest,
and even conceived its importance the NDP a nominally federalist party wiped out the BQ.
This is what has pissed off Trudeau Jr. and scared the bejesus out of Harper.
Both also lost seats to the NDP wave last election and could lose again.

Four years after facing a scoffing political punditry in
English Canada, the NDP wave in Quebec has not weakened but solidified and
gotten stronger. It also has now fully
transitioned from Jack Layton to Tom Mulcair, different men, different
political styles, both popular beyond what pundits expected. Tom Mulcair in
both Canada’s is enormously popular for a leader that few knew little about
even last December. The NDP has a
charismatic and talented leader who many can see as Prime Minister, after all
his opponent the current PM Stephen Harper came from exactly the same position;
an untried Leader of the Opposition.\

With the FTQ and the Solidarity Fund backing him in Quebec,
this shifts the power dynamic in Federal politics forever. The BQ is gone, a
Federalist party is surging in Quebec, and maintaining that hold, frustrating
Trudeau Jr. who lashed out at Mulcair in the first debate over the NDP success
with its Sherbrooke Accord, giving Quebecois the right to a simple majority 50
plus 1 if they were too hold another referendum, that is enough to satisfy the
Nationalists in the FTQ and across the province.

Whether they use that option in the future is questionable,
as we have seen in Scotland, even there the Nationalist sentiment did not
deliver a simple majority in their recent referendum vote. Why would it be
different in Quebec’s case. The NDP and Tom Mulcair are counting on that and
the Sherbrooke accord to satisfy the nationalists who no longer trust the Bloc
to speak for their values, which remain social democratic in nature, just like
the NDP.